Component maker moles say 'retina display' coming to Apple tab

Sources from within that group have indicated that Apple's next-gen tablet will indeed sport a resolution of 2048 x 1536 - four times as many pixels in the same area as the current iPad's screen delivers.

The claim comes in a DigiTimes report. While its sources - or possibly just source - are in a strong position to know, it's important to bear in mind that the site doesn't qualify how close they might be to Apple and its suppliers.

As such, the moles may simply be spouting the speculation that Apple is upping the iPad 2's screen resolution, rather than passing on what they know for sure to be fact.

We remain cautiously optimistic. The evidence for such a resoltuion hike is at best circumstantial, at worst entirely made up. But it's certainly possible for Apple to do, and doubling the resolution rather than moving up to, say, 1920 x 1080, makes it much easier for developers to support.

As yet Apple hasn't told the majority of developers that they should ready hi-res graphics updates for their iPad apps, which suggests either it has no such jump in mind, or that there will be sufficient time for devs to do so between the iPad 2's launch and its ship date.

Apple clearly won't want to tell them anything until the product is announced. To do so would effectively be to tell World+Dog what it's planning - information it doesn't want its competitors to use to their advantage.

Upping the resolution to 2048 x 1536 would immediately set the iPad 2 well apart from the raft of rivals about to row ashore once Google equips them with Android 3.0 paddles. ®